Music: Gould on Bach (from FB)

In response to Elena Dukhovny's comment, I present Glenn Gould's performance of the E minor prelude in the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1: https://youtu.be/1U06BQJGtsk. This is one of my favorite performances of his in the WTC (the F minor and C minor are up there, while the Eb minor is definitely not), and, because the last post mentioned Richter, much better than Richter's performance of the same.

Gould begins with his left hand in its usual mf, which gives the somewhat "rough-hewn" sound that he can contrast with the coquettish legato and supple dynamics of the right hand. The articulations and phrasing in the left hand (two notes legato, two notes staccato, breaking up the natural e-g-a-b a-b-a-g arcs into e-g a b a-b a g) create a push-and-pull effect and sustain tension that builds into the "breakout". I hear echoes of Cosma's music: https://youtu.be/-3uqC3drSrQ? Altogether a very modern feel which I find convincing, especially in light of the many "modern" harmonies and transitions in the piece (there's a lot more of that in Bach than you might imagine).

Comments from FB:

Zander Alec

There was a time when I thought Gould's performance of the WTC was better than Richter's. But Richter grows on you, like peaty scotch, one you consider the background.

When playing baroque, Richter did not rely on any romantic effects, such as an extremely sharp staccato or a strictly metered trill (WTC, Vol I, Fugue in A minor). While Gould's sound is a cold as Richter's, he still relies on the capabilities of the piano that Bach's keyboards didn't have, and Richter remains consistent with those. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7OS_vpMz-s

Richter was quite stingy with his "romantic self" even when playing romantics (his Rachmaninov's Concerto #2 sounds almost dry). Very moderate emotion, just the right amount to be authentic.

One of Bach's pieces that brings out the difference between the two performance in a very pronounced way is English Suite #3.

Dov Dukhovny

The link you posted is to a different fugue, not the one from WTC I. It's actually not bad, and I like it much better than Richter's A minor fugue from WTC I which I just looked up. Gould hits it out of the park by comparison.

Are Gould's staccatos a little sharper than what the harpsichord was capable of? Maybe. Are his trills a little crisper because of what the modern action allows? Sure. But then our pianos are even-tempered, not well-tempered, which makes a huge difference--well-tempered keys all had distinct feelings, hence the preludes and fugues for all twelve major and minor keys, each of which was suited to the characteristics of that key! And we know that performers did not actually play the notes the way we understand them from the text--they made extensive use of notes inégales, otherwise known as the "triplet feel" of what are written as regular eighth notes in jazz. We know that Bach used them explicitly in his Art of the Fugue, and he might have expected performers to use them in his other pieces as well. While Andras Schiff refuses to see Beethoven's 32nd sonata as boogie-woogie, a music professor of mine retorted that "they were always playing boogie-woogie!"

In short, I side with Taruskin (in his Text and Act and other places) on the question of "historical" performances. Aside from the impossibility of exactly duplicating performance practice, it is, more importantly, impossible to assess what that performance would've done for a contemporary listener given the unspoken (and therefore unwritten) interpretive assumptions he brought to the table. What matters to me, as I wrote in an earlier post, is that a performance give a piece a life that is very instinctively its own. If Gould can convince me acoustically, melodically, and harmonically that his performance is a robust interpretation I'm sold, and the fact is that usually, I have nothing to argue with (with exceptions, of course, such as the Eb minor prelude, which is totally unconvincing). Why not play the fugues as romantic pieces? Well, you can try it, but it's quite a flop. Sounds cheesy and forced--the text just doesn't sustain it! But the 2nd partita just begs for some dynamic swelling, especially the allemande and the sarabande.